This application is related to U.S. patent application 08/328,755 entitled COMBINED SUPPORT PLATE AND PRINTED WIRING BOARD FOR A SELF CONTAINED LASER GYRO and U.S. patent application 08/328,752 entitled DITHER MOTOR CONNECTOR FOR A SELF CONTAINED LASER GYRO filed on the same day by the same inventors and commonly assigned with the present application.
This invention is directed to the field of laser gyros and more particularly to a laser gyro which is contained in a package with its support electronics.
Laser gyros have attained wide acceptance as high quality, high accuracy navigation devices. Systems which originally used ring laser gyros could occupy an area of four cubic feet or more and generally weighed several pounds.
Such a large system would not work in certain applications, such as missles and satellites. Only a small, lightweight navigation system will work in these circumstances.
Accordingly, small laser gyro systems have been developed, such as the Honeywell GG1308, which is described in 9GG1308 Article by Thielman and Oelschlaeger. Such a laser gyro has size and weight advantages. But these advantages come at the expense of performance.
Larger gyros, which generally provide better performance, have been previously packaged such that only the laser block itself with any onboard circuitry is packaged within a hermetically sealed container. Other electronics were connected to the laser block, but resided outside the sealed container. Making connections to the block while retaining the seal thus became difficult.
It therefore became desirable to have a high performing, laser block co-located within the hermetically sealed container with its major support subsytems such as the power supply, path length control circuits, laser intensity monitor circuits and the like. This was to be accomplished while maintaining a small, lightweight system.